A Navy veteran found dead inside his apartment had been deceased for three years, and the case has left his grief-stricken family searching for answers as to how exactly this could have gone unnoticed for such a long period of time after they repeatedly reported his absence to the authorities.
A Navy veteran found dead inside his apartment had been deceased for three years, and the case has left his grief-stricken family searching for answers as to how exactly this could have gone unnoticed for such a long period of time after they repeatedly reported his absence to the authorities.
Ronald Wayne White, who would have been 51 at the time of his death in 2016, worked as a defense contractor and traveled around the world for work. His body was found last week when the DeSoto Town Center Apartment complex were investigating multiple units of where tenants had not been using water. But when they forced the bolted door open to White's apartment during their investigations, they found him dead on the kitchen floor. The medical examiner estimated that he had been dead for three years, according to ABC News’ Dallas affiliate WFAA.
"When the medical examiner told me three years, my knees gave away. Three years? And that's what I can't get past in my brain. I can't get past three years," his mother Doris Stevens said. "My biggest question is, how in the world could my son have been dead in that apartment and nobody knows anything?"
Stevens, who lives in Long Island, New York, said that her son had been in touch with her on a regular basis.
"My son would call me at least twice a month," his mother told WFAA. "He would call me from Egypt. He would call me from the Philippines. He would call me right from Dallas."